Ahmedabad: As chief minister Narendra Modi is gearing up for polls and has announced big time jobs for youths, the Gujarat high court’s clarification on its verdict over fixed pay scale scheme may come as a big setback for the government. The state government will have to bear huge financial burden as it will have to pay hundred of crores towards arrears to lakhs of employees recruited on fixed monthly wages since 1986. On January 20, acting on a PIL, the HC held the government’s scheme of hiring people on fixed-wage for five years and denying full salary to them as per the norms as illegal. The PIL was a complaint about exploitation of those 1.39 lakh employees taken into service since 2006, as per the record available to petitioner. It sought the pay scale to be increased as per the Sixty Pay Commission. The HC order, as it understood then, was to cost Rs 3,500 crore towards arrears and Rs 2,300 crore additional expenditure every year towards increased salary of the employees in various cadres. However,the government later filed a petition inquiring whether the court order should come into effect from the date of pronouncement – January 2012, or it will have a retrospective effect, said the government pleader Prakash Jani. To the government’s query, the bench of acting Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwala passed an order by rejecting the government’s plea seeking clarification and modification of its order. The HC made it clear that since the scheme of fixed wage has been declared illegal, it becomes invalid from its introduction in 1986. “This means lakhs of employees who were recruited by the government under this scheme will be benefited. Only the government can give figures, but over four lakh persons may be benefited,” said advocate Dharmesh Bhatt, who filed the petition. In this landmark judgment, the HC has asked the government to stop the scheme and start employing people on regular salaries. The court has also asked the government to pay full salary from the date of their appointment to those employed under the fixed-pay scheme for five years. Moreover, these employees will also be enjoying the benefit of continuous service.